10/23/2025

speaker
Moira
Chorus Call Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the STMicroelectronics third quarter 2025 earnings release conference call-in live webcast. I am Moira, the chorus call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference has been recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and 1 on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Jérôme Ramel, EVP Corporate Development and Integrated External Communication. Please go ahead. Thank you, Maura.

speaker
Jérôme Ramel
EVP Corporate Development and Integrated External Communication

Thank you, everyone, for joining our third quarter 2025 financial result call. Hosting the call today is Jean-Marc Chéry, ST President and Chief Executive Officer of Joining Jean-Marc on the call today are Lorenzo Grandi, President and CFO, and Marco Cassis, President Analog, Power and Discrete, MEMS and Sensors Group, and Head of STMicroelectronics Strategy, System Research and Application and Innovation Office. These live webcasts and presentation materials can be accessed on STInvestor's website. A replay will be available shortly after the conclusion of this call. This goal will include forward-looking statements that involve risk factors that could cause ST results to differ materially from management expectations and plans. We encourage you to review the safe harbor statement contained in the press release that was issued with the results this morning and also in ST's most recent regulatory filing for a full description of these risk factors. Also, to ensure all participants have an opportunity to ask questions during the Q&A session, please limit yourself to one question and a brief follow-up. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Jean-Marc Chéry, ST President and CEO.

speaker
Jean-Marc Chéry
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Jérôme. Good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining ST for our Q3 2025 earnings conference call. I will start with an overview of the third quarter, including business dynamics. I will then hand over to Lorenzo for the detailed financial overview. And we'll then comment on the Outlook and conclude before answering your questions. So, starting with Q3. We delivered revenues at $3.19 billion, $17 billion above the midpoint of our business Outlook range, with higher revenues in personal electronics, while automotive and industrial performed as anticipated, and CECP was broadly in line with expectations. All end markets but automotive are now back to year-on-year growth. Growth margin of 33.2% was slightly below the midpoint of our business output range, reflecting product mix within automotive and within industrial. Excluding impairments, restructuring charges, and other related phasal costs, diluted earnings per share was $0.29. During the quarter, we managed to work down inventories both in our balance sheet and in distribution and we generated a positive $130 million free cash flow. Let's now discuss our business dynamics during Q3. In automotive, during the quarter, we grew revenues about 10% sequentially, in line with expectations, driven by whole regions except Americas. Our book-to-bill came above parity. We expect to grow mid-single digits in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter, which would be the third consecutive quarter of sequential growth. During the quarter, we continued to execute our strategy for car electrification. We had wins with both silicon and silicon carbide devices for electrical vehicle applications. such as traction inverter and onboard charger designs. One new application where we see silicon carbide being used is inverters for full active suspension. Here we add a design wheel with a module solution for a key Chinese electrical vehicle maker. Another key element is a switch to electronic fuses. to support zonal and domain architectures, both in 12V and 48V. Here we headed to our pipeline of designs for our infuse controller with leading electrical vehicle makers and qualified our products for volume ramp-up. Other wins in the quarter included microcontrollers for DC-DC management in electrical vehicle powertrain, body control modules and HVAC systems across multiple vehicle models. In car digitalization, we are executing our microcontroller product roadmap with a strong lineup of new solutions across both our Herm-based Stellar and MSTM32A product families. Design-in activity continues globally, with engagement from both large-scale automotive OEMs and tier 1 suppliers. In legacy applications, we had several significant wins based on our smart power technologies in applications where we lead, such as airbags, steering and braking solutions. With our automotive grade sensors, we continue to see strong designing momentum and growing opportunities. Wins in the quarter included MEMS sensors for road noise cancellation and door control, and both MEMS and imaging sensors for in-cabin monitoring. Shortly after our results announcement in July, we announced that we entered in a definitive transaction agreement for the acquisition of NXP's MEMSensor business for a purchase price of up to $950 million in cash, complementing and expanding our current leading MEMSensor technology and product portfolio. The transaction remains subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, and is on track to close in H1 2026. In industrial, revenues were in line with expectations, showing increase of 8% sequentially and 13% year-over-year, back to year-on-year growth for the first time since the third quarter of 2023. Importantly, inventories in distribution further decreased. In Q4, we expect to go over new low single digits sequentially as we continue to decrease inventories in distribution. During the quarter, we saw strong designing activity for our Power Analog portfolio across a range of applications. These included factory automation, power systems, medical equipment, motor control, white goods, solar inverters, and metering. We also continue to expand the use of our industrial sensors in robotics, including robots and commodes, and humanoid robots. an area where we see demand for significant number of sensors. We also had wins in medical devices like insulin pumps and fall detectors. In embedded processing, we continued to win designs with our STM32 microcontrollers for a wide range of industrial applications, with products from all parts of the portfolio, from high-end to wireless, to specialized functions. These included power supply and optical modules for AI servers, industry automation and robotics, energy storage, home appliances, metering and wire goods. We have a full pipeline of new products and software coming to market in the next quarters and you will hear more about this during our STM32 Summit in November. For general purpose microcontroller, we grew revenues both sequentially and year over year, and we are on the right trajectory to return to our historical market share of about 23%. For personal electronics, third quarter revenues were above our expectations, up 40% sequentially, reflecting the seasonality of our engaged customer programs, but also increased silicon content, which also translated into year-over-year growth. Further strengthening of our unique position as a sensor supplier with both MEMS and optical sensing solutions, we signed a new license agreement with MetaLens This new agreement broadens our capability to produce advanced metasurface optics, leveraging ST's 300mm semiconductor and optics manufacturing capabilities. This opens up new opportunities from smartphone applications like biometrics, LiDAR and camera assist, to robotics, gesture recognition and object detection. Revenues for communication equipment and computer peripherals were broadly in line with expectations and up 4% sequentially. For AI data centers, we had multiple wings with silicon and silicon carbide devices for high-power solutions. Although, last quarter we announced that we are working closely with NVIDIA on a new architecture for 800V DC AI datacenter leveraging our PowerPro 3.0 by combining silicon carbide, gallium nitride and silicon-based technologies with advanced custom design at both chip and package level. I am pleased to underline that we recently completed full power testing on a prototype GAN-based solution, successfully demonstrating over 98% energy conversion efficiency. Silicon Photonics is another key technology for future data centers and AI factories. ST now heads the Starlight Consortium, a collaborative R&D program across the full value chain with key suppliers and customers to develop high-speed optical solutions for data centers, AI, telecommunications, and automotive, from the substrate to the final products. During Q3, we have seen an increased demand for Photonics ICs prototypes to be launched in the next quarter and beyond in our 300mm wafer fab. This confirms that Photonics ICs will be a revenue growth driver for ST in the near term. In Low Earth Orbit Satellites, we have further strengthened our leadership position in the rapidly growing low orbit satellite broadband market by beginning shipment to a second global customer. Leveraging our winning combination of BISEMOS technology for front-end modules and panel-level packaging for user terminals. Our business in this segment is well-positioned for steady growth, driven by several satellite constellations. Now, over to Lorenzo, who will present our key financial figures.

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